


Rows of Stitches, Lines of Pain

by IcyPanther



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Lance (Voltron) Whump, Protective Shiro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 23:45:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17949449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IcyPanther/pseuds/IcyPanther
Summary: Lines had been drawn all over the slender body. Dotted. Solid. Red. Black, blue, white, green stains against tan flesh. Others were made of stitches, of dried blood, of pain, andwhy had it taken them so long to find him?All of the lines sectioned off his body like some sort of science experiment, some, somethingto be studied, dissected. But, Shiro choked down the horror clawing up his throat, that’s all Lance had been to them.





	Rows of Stitches, Lines of Pain

**Author's Note:**

> **Timeline notes:** Set season one or two, although not vital to the timeline.  
>  **Warning notes:** Implied human (alien) experimentation, descriptions of aftermath and drug use. Nothing too graphic.

Shiro didn’t remember much of the past few minutes.

He’d entered the laboratory, zeroed in on Lance strapped to a table and the three figures standing above him, one holding a knife dripping red, the whisper of a cry stabbing straight into his heart.

He must have done something because now he was standing at the table, all of the aliens sprawled on the floor around him — unconscious? dead? he didn’t know, he didn’t care — and staring down with horror anew at the boy in front of him.

Lance was stripped bare, no modesty here. His ankles and wrists had been restrained in manacles with another bar across his abdomen and another cutting across his neck.

Lines had been drawn all over the slender body. Dotted. Solid. Red. Black, blue, white, green stains against tan flesh. Others were made of stitches, of dried blood, of pain and horror and _why had it taken them so long to find him?_

All of the lines sectioned off his body like some sort of science project, some, some  _thing_ to be studied, dissected.

But that’s all he had been to them.

Fresh blood was welling from a cut made on his left bicep. Not deep, Shiro noted in the back of his mind. It was okay to leave for now.

Okay.

Like anything about this was okay.

Smaller circles dotted his right arm, bruises in yellow and blue and purple surrounding irritated, reddened skin. Injections. Drugs.

It explained Lance’s silent state, his eyes closed although they were flickering beneath the lids, his face pinched with pain.

Sedated, but not well.

Had it been on purpose?

Had they wanted him semi-aware as they…?

God.

An IV was still in his arm, connected to a canister hooked to the side of the table.

Shiro resisted the urge to rip it out, anger still burning and he let it remain if only to try and tamp down the growing sickness and his own fuzzy memories of tables and needles and cold hands.

Instead he gently wrapped his prosthetic about the abused limb and eased the IV — and a needle, they’d left the fucking needle in his arm — free.

Lance whimpered.

His head shifted against the table, brow scrunching further.

“Lance,” Shiro breathed.

He wanted Lance to wake up.

He wanted him to stay unconscious, just for a little longer.

Just until he freed him from this hell.

Lance fell still a moment later.

He looked so _small._

Shiro wondered if he had ever looked like that on Haggar’s table.

He shoved the thought away.

Not now.

Lance.

Focus on Lance.

He turned his attention to the bars holding the boy down.

Those he was not gentle with.

His prosthetic whirled to life and he _sliced_ the heated limb through the bar across Lance’s stomach, even in his anger careful not to hit skin.

Sheer strength broke the manacles holding slender limbs captive and a _twist_ and a _pull_ later and Shiro removed the final restraint across Lance’s neck.

Mottled, bruised skin greeted him.

Lance had choked himself against it.

Repeatedly.

God.

Shiro forced himself to turn away, just for a few ticks, to remove the coat-like garment from one of the aliens.

His helmet crackled in that moment and Shiro almost activated his prosthetic in surprise.

That’s right.

The others.

“— _cleared this floor_ ,” Keith’s voice came across even.

Shiro could hear the waver behind it still.

Not unexpected given this house of horrors they had stumbled into.

It was once a research laboratory used to study fungi.

Now it studied aliens.

All kinds, all species.

Lance had been snatched up almost two weeks ago, a foraging trip gone horribly wrong.

It was a miracle they’d found him as quick as they did; no leads, no armor to track.

It was still two weeks too long.

Shiro supposed faintly he should be glad Lance was still in one piece.

Other aliens he’d found as he tore through his assigned floor had not been so lucky.

Dissected.

In pieces, limbs stacked neatly and labeled, organs the same.

He prayed they hadn’t been awake for those final moments.

The pain and fear imprinted on forever frozen faces preserved in glass cases told him otherwise.

He honestly hadn’t expected to find anything on his level, not alive at any point, after those earlier rooms, but he was nothing if not thorough and went to every door until his search came to this last one.

He didn’t want to think of what it meant that Lance was on _this_ floor.

Didn’t want to think about the bone saw laid out on the tray next to Lance’s head.

Didn’t want to think about the way the newest cut carved into tan flesh was directly on a thick black line that marked off the auxiliary limbs.

God.

A few minutes later and…

“ _Clear here too_ ,” Pidge sounded, so incredibly young. “ _Two aliens. They’re… they’re hurt. I need help.”_

 _“Coming,”_ Keith responded.

“ _Shiro_ ?” Hunk’s voice crackled and not just from the feedback. “ _Did you…_?”

Hunk had stumbled across the main containment area, almost twenty aliens gathered there, and he’d been tasked with escorting them all to the Yellow Lion. He’d almost started crying when Shiro told him to continue the evac rather than his search for Lance.

 _“I’ll find him,”_ Shiro had promised.

He almost hadn’t.

He’d almost been too late.

But...

“I found him,” Shiro keyed in.

Hunk’s low sob twisted something in his chest.

“... _is he…?”_ Pidge couldn’t finish her sentence.

Shiro wondered what the two aliens she had found looked like.

Did they still have all their limbs?

He couldn’t ask.

His arm twinged and his head ached.

“He’s okay,” Shiro said. “We’ll… we’ll be up soon.”

That was all he could manage for now, a pulse building behind his eyes.

He forced it away.

Lance.

Focus on Lance.

But the lab table mocked him, metal and restraints and cold laughter and—

No.

Focus.

Focus focus _focus._

He had to get them both out of here before he couldn’t anymore.

He had pulled the coat free now — no blood, good, that was good — and brought it over to Lance, gently draping it from chest to mid-thigh.

Lance twitched.

Shiro paused.

A few seconds later Lance went quiet again and Shiro tucked the makeshift blanket as best he could underneath Lance. The touch, as light as it was, had Lance moving, _flinching,_ away and another whimper sounded.

“Shh, shh,” Shiro soothed, one hand sliding now beneath Lance’s shoulders and the other beneath his knees.

Lance jerked.

Convulsed.

It was a good thing Shiro hadn’t managed to yet lift him off the table as he otherwise might have dropped him at the violent movement, more strength left in him than Shiro had thought, and he carefully and quickly set him back down. 

Lance’s lips parted, a low moan torn from his throat.

Shiro realized it was a word.

“...nooo,” it came, a gasp, a plea. “N-no…”

“Lance, it’s okay. It’s okay,” Shiro murmured. “It’s me. It’s Shiro.”

He reached a hand forward then, going to brush the boy’s matted bangs from his face, to offer that small comfort.

Lance _recoiled,_ a high keen of terror piercing the air.

Shiro blinked at his metal hand, fingers outstretched.

Metal.

Implements.

Experimentation.

_Pain._

God.

God he was so _stupid._

“Lance,” he croaked. “Lance, it’s, it’s okay. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”

Lance trembled on the table.

God.

He pulled off his glove, his own limbs trembling, revealing peach skin.

Warm flesh.

It was that he lifted towards Lance, brushing fingers against the tan cheek.

Lance abruptly stilled.

“Shh. Shh,” Shiro repeated the stroke. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m not… not going to hurt you.”

His throat was closing up.

“‘m not gonna hurt you,” Shiro choked out.

Lance turned his face ever so into Shiro’s hand, a barely audible sigh pulled from him.

He went limp.

He still continued to shake.

Shiro let his hand linger for a few ticks more, trying to steady his own breathing.

Then he got back to work.

He switched direction, his metal limb going beneath Lance’s knees where he pulled the blanket down further to prevent metal on flesh contact, and his other hand wrapped about Lance’s back.

There were lines there too, he realized, as he lifted him up. Crisscrossing diagonals of colors and more bloody stitches and… and burns.

Shiro’s stomach rolled.

They’d _cauterized_ him. The skin all around the burns was inflamed, puckered despite the surgical precision they had used to do so.

There were so many, his back a roadmap of suffering, as though the other lines and marks weren't bad enough.

Shiro swallowed back his own sob.

God.

Was this something a pod could even fix?

Shiro already knew there would be no forgetting what had happened, not truly.  But he’d hoped, maybe, they could heal his body, leave it without a scar, without a physical reminder like Shiro was forced to see every time he looked in the mirror.

How foolish he had been.

Lance’s head lolled backwards when Shiro finally shifted him into his arms, exposing the ugly bruises embedded in his neck. Shiro managed to tip him forward enough so his head came to rest on the crease between Shiro’s chest and shoulder.

Shiro fled from the room and all it represented.

Shiro walked quickly but steadily down the hall, trying not to jostle Lance.

But when they reached the stairs there was no way to avoid some movement and halfway up the flight Lance gave another little jerk in his arms, moan passing through his teeth.

Shiro looked down and was more than a little surprised to see hazy half-lidded dark eyes looking up.

“Lance?” he whispered, pausing in the middle of the stairs. “Lance, buddy? Can you… can you hear me?”

But Lance’s gaze didn’t focus on him.

It slid right over Shiro’s face, looking at nothing.

On second glance Shiro could see why.

Lance’s pupils were dilated, nearly taking over his entire iris, and there was a glassy sheen to them while the whites of his eyes were flecked with red that Shiro didn’t think could entirely be attributed to crying.

The tremble shaking him took on a new meaning too.

And with it came a sickening realization.

Lance’s body was still full of drugs, a cocktail of foreign substances that they would need to monitor, need to flush out.

He couldn’t go into a pod.

Not yet.

God.

“Oh, buddy,” Shiro murmured and Lance’s vacant gaze swung in his direction even though it still didn’t land on him. “Oh, Lance.”

Lance blinked once, slowly, before his eyes fluttered shut again, a tiny sigh escaping him.

It almost sounded peaceful.

Shiro continued his ascent.

“We’re going to take care of you,” he whispered.

Promised.

This was one he knew he could keep.

“We’re going to take care of you,” he repeated. “You’re going to be okay. Alright, Lance? You’re going to be okay.”

It was probably wishful thinking on Shiro’s part, just an effect of the staircase or the tremble from the drugs or the pain, but he swore Lance inclined his head as if agreeing.

For the first time since Lance had gone missing a hint of a smile crossed Shiro’s face, choosing to take the nod as he confirmation he desperately needed it to be.

Even unconscious and in pain Lance was still able to somehow make things seem just a little brighter. A little more hopeful.

Lance was going to pull through. They would all take care of him.

And both of them, even with the horrors they had endured stitched forever into their minds, were going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> FYI Voltron blew that lab sky high once all of the victims were rescued :) 
> 
> Prize for round one of my photoset fic game I hosted on Tumblr with the prompt of drugged and unconscious Lance from Shiro’s perspective. 
> 
> I’ve been pretty busy of late with a few projects. You can keep up with me on my [tumblr, icypantherwrites](http://icypantherwrites.tumblr.com/), for all the updates. Also! Fic Club (i.e. book club to discuss my fanfictions) has its first meeting later today. Check us out on my [discord server, IcyPanther Writes ♥](https://discordapp.com/invite/P7tUAdh)
> 
> If you enjoyed the fic, please please do leave a comment below detailing what you liked about it. AO3 does not allow authors to post links to financially support us and our efforts, but emotional support and validation is just as important and your comments mean the world. **Please don’t just read and run! Leave a comment! Thank you!**


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